Article | NORLIT 2009: Codex and Code; Aesthetics; Language and Politics in an Age of Digital Media; Stockholm; August 6-9; 2009 | The Body Doubled. Villy SĂ¸rensenâ€™s â€śDuoâ€ť and the Truth of the Body

This paper explores Villy SĂ¸rensenâ€™s short story â€śDuoâ€ť and its interest in conceptions of corporeality and embodiment. Many of SĂ¸rensenâ€™s short stories and other works are populated with bodies that may be described as abnormal; aberrant; and at times even monstrous. While SĂ¸rensenâ€™s bodies are often drawn from the world of folktales and ballads and/or seen as symbolic of psychological and existential conditions (and certainly can be read in this way); one might also read SĂ¸rensenâ€™s short stories as indicative of a radical refashioning of the body itself as formed by/forming the 20th century. Indeed one might even argue that SĂ¸rensenâ€™s bodies prefigure postmodern concerns with embodiment which sees the body as not so much bounded and delimited in an absolute sense; a container as it were; but rather as fluid; fragmented; penetrated; and dispersed. Such bodies function no longer as natural and familiar objects in the world but as aberrant and disruptive forms that call for and often engage in new and different ways of relating to the world. â€śDuoâ€ť represents just such a text. Here SĂ¸rensen explicitly engages Cartesian dualism and opposes this to the encounter of the monstrous body that defies the categorical separation of mind and body. SĂ¸rensen explores the inability of the rational to deal with what is inherently absurd. By emphasizing the bodily and corporeal nature of what it means to be human in his short stories; SĂ¸rensen underscores the fragmentary and necessarily multiple nature of embodied experience.

NORLIT 2009: Codex and Code; Aesthetics; Language and Politics in an Age of Digital Media; Stockholm; August 6-9; 2009

Author:

Nathaniel Kramer

Title:

The Body Doubled. Villy SĂ¸rensenâ€™s â€śDuoâ€ť and the Truth of the Body

References:

No references available

NORLIT 2009: Codex and Code; Aesthetics; Language and Politics in an Age of Digital Media; Stockholm; August 6-9; 2009

Author:

Nathaniel Kramer

Title:

The Body Doubled. Villy SĂ¸rensenâ€™s â€śDuoâ€ť and the Truth of the Body